


The Long Defeat

by Ancalimë (Cymbidia)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Akallabêth, Blasphemy, But you're a demigod, Crisis of Faith, First Age, Gen, Hubris, I dunno how to tag that though, Light Angst, Second Age, Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26194048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Ancalim%C3%AB
Summary: The Downfall of Númenor, one of the many downfalls of Sauron.
Relationships: Ar-Pharazôn & Sauron | Mairon, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor & Sauron | Mairon
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	The Long Defeat

**Author's Note:**

> A fic for Fernstrike's amazing art! I have many thoughts about the many destructions of Sauron, and their amazing art only inspired more. I think the Downfall of Númenor marked a turning point for Sauron, not just in how he did things but how things caught up to him - there was no slinking away or salvaging this into something he could leverage, he just got slammed in the face by the same waves as everyone else.  
> I stylise Eru as "E--" once or twice in Sauron's perspective, but this isn't meant to mimic to how Jewish people write G-d to avoid writing it in full. I wanted to show Sauron censoring his thoughts and trying to avoid calling down attention from an almighty he is actively acting against. I hope my intentions come across but if not... Pease let me know if it comes off as iffy and I'll get rid of it.

The roaring -- it was the roaring, more than anything else. The day was sunny, the seas still. Then the world opened up, and the waves began to froth and crash mightily. They crested one upon another against the mountains of Númenor with suddenly and unrelenting fury. But more than anything else, they roared, a cascading bellow of destruction and condemnation, a hammer striking down upon the earth without so much as a messenger sent in warning. The world was being broken. The world was being remade. The cold indifferent hand of Eru Ilúvatar reached down again at long last to reshape the world. A great frothing blue maw, opening up wide.

* * *

When the fleet set sail, Mairon waved them off like a warbride, all but fluttering a handkerchief. Pharazôn had clasped Mairon’s hand with as much strength as he could muster out of his weak, Mannish body, defined muscles shifting under smooth skin as he held one who was now allegedly beloved to him.

“I will await my lord faithfully,” Mairon vowed, golden and true, eyes glittering. “Til he returns to me in triumph, the king of all of Arda.”

Pharazôn drew his sword and saluted Mairon, then turned and trotted into the belly of his great warship, from where flags and signals began to fly out, and the fleet started their final departure.

Mairon stood perfectly still at the head of a silent crowd of onlookers, his eyes glittering and glassy, his hair fluttering picturesquely, his lips quirked at a meaningless angle. His hands were behind his back, one hand loosely circling the wrist of the other. He looked like a statue. Of course he did not breathe, or blink. He only watched with perfect attentiveness, the rest of his fleshly cloak set aside as he focused his great immeasurable spirit on the act of simply looking upon this fleet of mortals. They had done it twice, taking down the might of Tar-Mairon, the lord of all Middle Earth. Surely, given their previous experience, they would at least serve their purpose. What was the glory of the Host of Valinor, faced against mere mortal Men? Firstborn and Secondborn would break against each other, while the Ainur wrung their hands, forbidden by E-- to strike down His mortal children.

Mairon had hope that Pharazôn might make it as far as Tirion before he was destroyed. It was a wild hope, but oh, how bright the blazes would be, when a mere corrupted mortal brought the stench of death and war to the Undying Lands once more! How sweet it would be, if Elven blood would be spilt again there. Even just a drop would be enough of a reminder of he who had done so once before. Mairon kept his gaze on the horizon.

There was the matter of winds, of currents, of navigation, and by the time the gilded fleet of Ar-Pharazôn faded from mortal sight, the crowd behind Mairon was restless and beginning to shiver. The evening sea wind buffeted against their rich embroidered cloaks. The fashion was for cloth-of-gold, which was hardly a comfortable or practical option for insulation.

He paid them no mind. The fleet was beyond their sight, but not beyond his. It was a clear enough day that he could just about see Tol Eressëa, and all the miles Pharazôn’s fleet had to sail. He whirled around and began the climb up to the Temple, where he would have a better vantage point. He would watch, and he would wait. It was a gamble, the greatest gamble he had undertaken yet, but the distant possibility of success blinded his rationality to the near-certainty of failure. The fleet might not return, and Sauron would be left regent. The fleet might return, and Sauron might be victorious. A different fleet might come to Middle-Earth, but Sauron had his own escape ready and fully provisioned.

* * *

“And what of Sauron?” inquired Morgoth idly, toying with his broken crown.

“No word, my lord,” said Gothmog. “He was defeated, not destroyed. I would wager he has slinked away to lick his wounds, the old dog.”

“No matter,” said Morgoth. He gripped the two remaining Silmaril with one burnt hand, while he crushed the iron crown with the other. “His failure is personal, not tactical. You will return to your campaign. I will await the return of my unfaithful Mairon, and perhaps, were he wise, he would bring back my Silmaril when he returned, so that I would not have to carry out the consequences of his failure,

Mairon, spying in the shape of the least of rats, skittered out of the room and through a rat hole in the wall. He scampered out through one of the burning tunnels beneath the fortress, and exited exhausted and panting in his chittering rat body. He returned himself to a more dignified shape, though the wolf was now scarred from the dogfighting. He allowed himself one furious howl. Then he drew away and began to plan. There was nothing more for him here. Morgoth did not forgive easily, and this was the greatest of failures. He could tear after the Silmaril alone, he supposed, and buy back Morgoth’s favour with it. But he could also flee into the south, where Morgoth’s armies had never marched. The land was freer there, the men untouched by his evil. Perhaps another influence could spread itself there, at least for a while.

Mairon glared balefully up at the moon. The Valar had waged war to make Arda ready for the coming of the Elves. No matter how they played favourites and held grudges, they wouldn’t abandon the Elves of Middle-Earth forever. One moment of weakness, and there’d be another great war, and where would Morgoth be then?

He shed his wolf-form and shifted into a Mannish body. Strong, warm, trustworthy, at least on first glance. He had survived the first war by burrowing into the deepest of the Pits, but the Valar would not overlook those a second time. Surely the genealogies of Men were not so crystal clear as the genealogies of Elves. The Valar did not seem to care so closely for the Secondborn as they did the first. Perhaps it was their mortality, more alike to plants and animals than Elves and Ainur. Their unknown fate outside of Ëa made the stench of death that hung about them less bearable than even the dwarves, who at least were mostly known quantities.

What was the untimely death of a few Men, when they all died in the end? How could a Man plead the grievance of their death, if they were never reborn? They were always dying, and suffering. They were half-corrupted even before Morgoth or Mairon got their hands on them. They were grotesque, beastly. No, the Valar cared not for Men, had no investment in their plight, felt no softness for these latecomers. The least favourite child, caught between the novelty and the anticipation and the long years of affection given to Elves, and the pity and closeness and indulgence for the dwarves who were made by one of their own.

Mairon would become overlord to these Men, and the Valar would never turn their gaze to him, never wage wars against him on their behalf. And Mairon, who understood best how to efficiently husband animals, how to squeeze all the work out of beasts of burden, would have Middle-Earth. He knew the power of that which was overlooked. Scorned. Cast aside for second best. He was not a Balrog. He was not Morgoth. He did not destroy mindlessly. He built. He built great works, with the strength of his will and the skill of his hands and the bodies of his thralls. And he would build himself a kingdom, the kingdom he had always wanted but never dared to take. The kingdom that he had descended down from the Void to claim.

* * *

“They are coming, Lord,” gibbered one of Tar-Mairon’s last remaining lieutenants, his ornate spear clattering in his trembling gauntlets. Tar-Mairon did not deign to give him any reaction but a slow blink. The decadent constructs of the throne of The Lord of All Earth glittered in the pale cold sun, and the sharp eyes and placid expression on Tar-Mairon’s fleshly form pierced the Man like a knife.

Tar-Mairon cocked his head. “Wilt thou flee also?” he inquired mildly. “Shalt thy honour too be trampled under the stampede of cravens and oathbreakers?”

The Man did not meet his eyes when he said, meekly, “no, Lord, I am no craven.” But Tar-Mairon saw into his heart, and knew that his will and his faith had been broken by the might of the hordes of Númenor, as great and glorious as a second coming of The Host of Valinor. What could a mere mortal expect, when Tar-Mairon had already been broken once under the might of the Men of the West? Tar-Mairon understood only too well. He felt it too, in his ethereal heart, the inevitable defeat upon his doorsteps. And for what? Tar-Mairon was not lacking in brute force, but he was also a craftsman who knew that sometimes craft was not strength, but deftness and precision.

Mairon drew his sword from its scabbard. It was a beautiful sword, and the simplicity of its form was extravagant enough. An old design, from long ago, but one that had managed to last in Mairon’s particular favour all these years. He gave the sword a few elaborate twirls, and sheathed it back in its scabbard. It was too beautiful, too clean.

“Give me your spear,” Mairon said, and the Man handed it over, hands no longer trembling now that he knew his fate.

“My lord,” cried the Man, and was silent.

Mairon studied him, the gleam of his plate, the elaborately embroidered surcoat with insignias of high honour. His scarred face, speaking of long years in service - long for a Man, at least.

“You have proven your honour,” Mairon said, and ran the Man through with his own spear.

He removed the blood spattered plate and chains, and called for servants to bring him soft delicate robes. Silk and sparing applications of goldwork. Ethereal -- vulnerable. He set aside the sword that had accompanied him for the past age, and the various kinds of jewels and ornaments that he adorned his fleshly form with. Barefoot, clad in a simple robe, holding an ornamental blade scrounged up from the depths of his treasury, hair unclasped and unbraided, Mairon went forth alone, against the turning tide of his Men and his creatures fleeing from a power greater and more fearsome than he.

He knelt, and cast himself upon their mercy, and allowed the wrath of Men to overcome the power of an Ainur, so that one day their might would become his to command.

“O great Lords of the West, stay your swords and your spears, for I cast myself upon your mercy,” said Mairon, bowing low. Half prostrate. His delicate silk robes were patched with mud, but he paid it no mind. His face was turned down, yet the cold coy glint of his eyes peered up at the great lords of Westernesse with perfect neutrality. He was like a carved stone.

Men liked to see it upon him, that still perfection. It soothed them, and made them think they understood the workings of his celestial soul upon his petty body. It made them think that there was awkwardness between soul and embodiment. Not even the Elves suffered such an indignity, yet Men somehow always seemed relieved to see such a thing in an Ainu. What swine, that they could not trust a great power without ascribing it constraints they could understand. Nevertheless, Mairon calculated the precise measure of inhuman grace with which to temper his humble and abject pleas for mercy. His face contorted into expressions of terror and remorse, and his voice trembled and shook as he cried out and sued for pardon. His fire was veiled, his terrible majesty concealed from the limited senses of the Secondborn, yet never once did the unwavering gleam in his eyes fade from view.

* * *

Mairon rode into his master’s great fortress on one of the lesser drakes that he had tamed by hand. His gentle laughter ran out like silver bells. It was difficult for most of the denizens and slaves of Angband to look upon him when he was like this, glowing with divine radiance. He was clothed in some shapeless and shimmering raiment that did not seem to be of earthly weave, and he had a tangle of jewels in his hair. None so luminous as his master’s great treasures, but works of his own hand that had once made him the pride of Aulë’s great forge.

A chill clear breeze clung to him as he swooped down and jumped off the back of his steed with a feather-light leap. The draft of cold air made the orc-slaves and the man-thralls cringe away. These were not army conscripts or captured elves, but bred palace slaves. They had never known any air but the hot humid smog of the Iron Hells. Mairon cut down the closest thrall, who seemed too frightened by Mairon’s sudden appearance to remember his duties. Others hurried forwards to take his weapons and to lead away his steed. Mairon allowed the reins to be taken from his hand, but did not deign to disrobe or disarm.

“My lord,” he called, sweeping into Melkor’s grand throne room with a beaming smile and a proud hand upon the spiked hammer at his hip. “I return victorious. Yet another nest of vermin routed out from within your lands, and what’s more, slaves enough to replace what we lost in the last push. Why, you soon shall have in truth what is yours by right.” He gave an obsequious bow, and Melkor rewarded him with unrestrained laughter.

“And when I am Lord of all Arda,” Melkor promised with a smile, “then the greatest of my lieutenants shall be the king of all Middle-Earth.” It was clearly he was not speaking of High Captain Gothmog, who was by all accounts a fine fighter, but was, given his nature as a Balrog, perhaps not suited to be a king of any kind. That was why Mairon had never embraced his fire-nature, despite being a forge Maia once. It was better to maintain a veil across the spirit as well as the body. Useful.

Mairon shifted the shell of his body, and sank into the shape of a wolf-creature. “I would be your shepherd, o Lord,” he said through a slavering muzzle. He paced at the foot of Melkor’s great throne, scratching and pawing at the ground as he thought of the work to be done, the promises, the possibilities.

“A great shepherd of Elves and Men,” agreed Melkor, but he no longer seemed enthused. That was an eternal point of contention. Melkor dreamt of the eradication of Elves and Men from his world, but Mairon desired only to dominate such creatures, and always protested total extermination.

“Only at your pleasure, Lord,” said Mairon in submission, and excused himself to the mathematical experiments running in his workshop.

* * *

Pharazôn came into the workshop when sent for. Mairon was very clear that mortal men were to stay out unless invited. Unlike his other demands, this edict had never been tested, purely because Pharazôn had more survival instinct than a braindead gnat.

“Your new sword, my King,” said Mairon, his face neutral. “A little present, may it serve you well.” He turned from where he had been hammering away at a trifle too metaphysically complex for Pharazôn to ever discern, and gestured at the sword in a scabbard left haphazardly at the corner of a workbench. It threatened to be subsumed by the mysterious tools and trinkets that populated the workshop. It was more a study than a smithy, on account of all the workbenches groaning under the weight of paper and parchment, but Mairon would never deign to inhabit a lair without a head source and the room to hit things on an anvil.

Pharazôn approached the workbench delicately, careful not to touch anything else from Mairon’s hoard of forgotten caprices. The scabbard was finely made, dripping with carefully arranged jewels. It was a perfectly mundane sheath, mad by perfectly mortal hands. Mairon didn’t care much for the decorative these days - he liked clean things, simple things, elegant and strong and straightforward things. But Pharazôn liked a decorative scabbard, so Mairon had scared one up from a mortal craftsman, though it would never be worth of the blade it housed. The sword, when drawn out of the scabbard, was entirely too yellow for the warfare of this age.

“It’s not true gold like yours,” murmured Pharazôn, running a fingertip along the blade and drawing blood without having to apply any pressure at all. The cut was so clean that it forgot to sting.

“You have not the will of an Ainu to reinforce a gold blade,” said Mairon dispassionately. “True gold would be no stronger than clay in the hands of a mortal man. The strength of my sword comes not from its metal.”

“Nevertheless, it is a pleasant colour,” Pharazôn said. “Perhaps one day, when I grow into the prowess of my ancestors.”

Ah, Pharazôn’s _ancestors_. Elves, and Maiar. Sauron studied him with a clear cold gaze. “You are welcome to attempt it,” Mairon said, “but unless your spirit is eternal and imperishable and cannot be cleaved by mortal blade or crude metal, you will not live to attempt it more than once.”

“Ah,” said Pharazôn, giving it a twirl. He liked to ape Mairon, to clothe himself in ostentatious gold when he went abroad to peacock, and to forgo ostentation court fashions and clothe himself in light linen when he wanted to seem at peace.

“You will find, my liege,” Mairon said, drawing back the calculated iciness in his voice for a moment, “that it is stronger than the spirits of mortal men. The steel is an alloy I formulated to make the blades of the great Balrog captains of Lord Melkor’s armies, many years ago. It has never broken against the arms of mortal men.” He had formulated the alloy in Aulë’s forge, one of a handful of recipes that he had tried out for a decorative door handle for a new store room someone had dug and forgotten to make a door for. Everything had been an opportunity to experiment, in those days before the war. Before Morgoth. No mortal hand ever touched that door handle, and practical testing showed that it had the required qualities of being reasonably strong and appearing golden.

Pharazôn sheathed the blade, and settled the sheathe around his hip. “A lovely trinket, my lord Mairon.” Pharazôn searched the sea of Mairon’s other trinkets for a moment, before he came across an intricate circlet of cleverly twisted silver wire. He picked it up with deliberateness, and set it on his head. “Would you make me a golden crown to match?”

“No,” Mairon said baldly. “I will not.”

“No?” Pharazôn said silkily, a threat.

“I will outfit your armies,” said Mairon, clamping down one of his improved drawplates onto an anvil, and unspooling a coil of thick gold wire. “as I outfitted Lord Melkor’s armies of old. In something that looks gold, given your insistence on aesthetics over expedience. And you will make me a great fleet, great enough to host an army many magnitudes larger than the one that conquered me. And your golden armada will take you to a land where a greater smith than I dwell, and he will make you a crown, the greatest of crowns, when you are worthy of it. When you can make him do such a thing.”

“A bold promise.” Pharazôn removed the circlet from his head and tossed it aside. “No matter how many times I hear this particular promise, it never becomes any less outlandish.”

Mairon tugged at one end of the steel wire, pulling it so that it thinned enough to fit through a hole in the drawplate. Then, gripping the thin end, Mairon tugged the length of wire through with one smooth flick of a wrist.

“When your armies came to conquer me for the second time,” Mairon said, twisting and bending the wire with his hands, “I did not take up arms. I came, with my second best sword, and I cast it on the ground at the feet of a horde of Men. When the great armies of the King of Middle-Earth turned aside in the face of the Men of Westernesse, my hold over my thralls was broken. The blade of my best sword was broken. My indomitable and everlasting will was broken. I might have turned my great and terrible wrath upon you, but that too was broken.”

Pharazôn straightened his scabbard and turned towards the door. “Good of you to remember,” he said.

“You conquered me twice _._ ” said Mairon, snapping the excess wire from the object in his hand. It was Mairon himself, in crude miniature. Mairon took Pharazôn’s hand and deposited the figurine on his palm, then folded his hand closed around it. “You proved to me that not only was it possible for Men to overcome an Ainu, it was _reproducible_. Nevermind Morgoth, or Manwë, or Aulë. I have tasted servitude at their hands, but never _defeat_.”

“You are hardly the greatest of the Ainur,” said Pharazôn, pocketing the figurine, and was gone.

Mairon picked up the circlet that Pharazôn had tossed aside, then compressed it into a ball, before liquefying it in the palm of his hands. He did not like its flowery shape. It was too busy, the shape too weak. It would serve better in a shape that was more precise. Cleaner, more mathematical. More perfect.

* * *

When the waves came down, they howled, and they roared.

Sauron looked down upon the crumbling shape of Elenna from the Great Temple. He was dressed simply in light robes. He held no sword. He had no armour. He was not turning to flee, but neither was he kneeling in submission. Sauron did not think to sue for mercy, because Morgoth had taught the Valar better than to give their enemies mercy. Instead, Sauron simply stood at the entrance of a temple he had built, and knew that it would give him no shelter.

So it would end in water, this time.

This time, yes, but there was always the next, and the next, and the next.

The water could not destroy him, not forever, not unless someone wanted to very badly.

Nothing could destroy him forever, but it was getting harder and harder to remember that, when the water rose up.

Would he never be free? Would he be doomed to repeat the same thing over and over, each time ending in a failure more abject than the one before?

He had not been taken in the wave that swept through Beleriand, but it seemed that he could not escape Ulmo forever.

Sauron looked to the skies, out past the clouds, beyond the stars, and into the Void. He wondered if there was anyone listening there. He wondered if anyone there was anyone listening to _him_ still. The calculated expression of divine coolness melted from his face, and there was something like relief in his eyes as the corners of his lips twitched upwards, and he began to laugh.

The Secondborn of Númenor screamed and wailed around him, some running for high ground, others aiming for the ships, hoping to sail away from their doom. The queen brushed past Sauron with a procession of handmaidens, each wearing a white gown and each covering their face with a white funeral veil. The panicked masses shrank from the retinue, even as they followed them upwards. Sauron, standing atop the temple of Melkor, simply laughed at them. The earth was breaking. The _world_ was breaking. The perfect flat plane of Arda bent, and the fabric of space and time curved until Valinor disappeared beyond an unnatural horizon. Not even Aulë and Ulmo combined had such power, to change the shape of Ëa.

“Shalt thy Lord deliver thee, O Faithful Men of Númenor?” he called down below, teeth clenched against the rage that wanted to howl out of his throat, and was ignored.

“Shall I plead for mercy, O Maker of Arda?” He called into the sky. The winds wailed , but it was unclear whether they intercepted his challenge before it reached out into the Void. “Is this the price of my crime, O Father? Or have you finally deigned to punish your better beloved children? Is this the limit of your great and endless store of pity, oh Creator? Is _this_ the crime so great that you shall disown us for?”

A bold of lightning struck the ground not two inches from where Sauron stood, but he did not flinch. “Have you deigned to speak to us after all these silent years for them? For _them?_ For the buzzing of disobedient mayflies, gone in a blink? Not even for the sake of Elves, but for the sake of a handful of _Men_?” Sauron shouted, though his voice was drowned out by the shriek of the wind. He covered his carefully crafted face with a finely wrought hand, feeling the wetness of rain and tears on his palms.

“For the sake of _men,_ ” he continued wetly, hoarsely. “A few experimental phrases. A theme that can be sung and resung without effort. A shadow projected by our Music. For _their_ sake, oh father, yet never for ours? We, your true firstborn children? Where were you, when your firstborn child sought to destroy your works? Where where you when all your Ainur turned against your precious usurping Elves? Yet here you are, for the sake of ants underfoot?”

Sauron gripped a balustrade as another gust of wind tore past, uprooting the great ceremonial altar upon which he had made countless sacrifices to Morgoth. “Or...I wonder,” said Sauron to himself, softly. “Are your Valar afraid? Have they learned at last of the power of Men? The Men of Westernesse, who have already twice defeated the greatest of the Ainur? Are they afraid, father? Have they begged for your aid? Could it be, then, that great Manwë and mighty Ulmo quivered in fear of the might of that which I once kept as thralls and slaves? Do they fear to share in my fate, to be trodden underfoot by the very muck of the earth itself?”

But Sauron now saw that he could no longer place his faith in the power of mortal men. No, not the Men, who turned with fear, with treachery, with greed, with hope. Not the Valar, whose greatness constrained them, and all the great workings of all their great powers were limited by Ëa, and by existing within in. No, Sauron had no more faith in gods or in men. Only in Sauron of the Maia, who was King of all Middle-Earth when Morgoth had managed to barely conquer half the continent. Oh, he had corrupted the world and all within it, and Middle-Earth bore the brunt, but it took such great power to bring forth the least of evils into the world. Sauron had no patience and no excess of majesty for such a thing. Only he knew the way forward.

Morgoth only even bought obedience with pain and fear, but Sauron knew better. He sought not for dominion over the lands and the sea, only that of orcs and men. And that could be achieved with means beyond the meddling purview of the Valar. Simple, petty, mortal means. He would not overreach again. He did not need to destroy, only dominate. He could not keep spreading himself thin, like Melkor. He must preserve himself, bolster the burning heart of his divine essence. So long as he could dominate even one mortal mind, it would be enough. Men had perfect the craft of tyrannising other Men. He needed only that they do it for him instead.

"I am the least and the greatest of your servants, o lord,” said Sauron softly, laughing again. “But am I not now the King of all Middle-Earth, as was promised? Did you think I needed you, Lord? Thought you that I still worshiped? Still waited? Still contented myself with slinking in the shadows and readied the world for your return, as I did so many years ago when you stumbled home with your treasures burning your hand? Think you I so foolish, my lord? That I would be faithful? That I would remain faithful? That I had faith? Sawest thou the great waves, my liege, breaking Beleriand in thy wake?

“Did you receive the offerings of my acolytes, you faithless craven shadow, there in your darkest night? Where is thy might now, O greatest of the Valar? Shall you raise another mountain, Lord? Shall you raise only one more mountain, the least of islands, when once you shaped the world as freely as a child shaping clay? Shall you drain dry the sea?” Sauron tore away the band upon his head, and stamped it underfoot. He bared his teeth at the skies. “Where is your might, that you may deliver your faithful? Where is your infinite power, LORD, in the infinite night?” Sauron cried. The wind howled, but Sauron’s howling was louder. There was a lull in the destruction, and a gentle gust of wind that might have been a sigh, before the onslaught returned, twice as furious.

Sauron howled and screamed, strained and pushed, but the invisible hand breaking the world and him with it was the will of Eru Ilúvatar, and he could no more stop it than a flea could stop the passage of the Sun.

He let go of the balustrade he had been clinging to, and paid no more attention to the quaking of the earth or the howl of the skies. Tears streamed down his face, but he did not wipe them away. Lightning flashed across the skies, but he paid it no mind. The groaning and gurgling of the crumbling waterside cities did not move him.

Númenor was of no more consequence. There was nothing more here for him, except death, and that would never conquer him. At last, at long last, he could finally see. He finally understood the way of things. He did not need to pay any mind to the West, not even to the waters that loomed up above him. He smiled. It was an awful thing, the grimace of a trapped animal, the drawn rictus of a stiff body.

He was Sauron. He was the One. He was, in and of himself, wholly sufficient.

He needed no lord to shield him. He needed no grand vision of annihilation. He needed only to take what was his for the taking.

He would be king. He would never be afraid again. He would build a great tower, tallest of all towers, taller than all the mountains of Middle-Earth, a tower that would not crumble like the works of Men and Elves. A tower that would not be cleansed by even the greatest roaring of the sea. A fortress, a monument to him for all time. He would _be_ a tower, impenetrable. He was the king of the world. He was a perfect jewel.

He did not need to cling on to Tar-Mairon the Admirable, Mairon the Gift-giver, Mairon the blessed and the damned. He was Sauron, he was Gorthaur, putrid and hated and obeyed. So what if he was but a worm, a flea, the least of roaches, in the face of his Father’s will and the might of the Valar? So long as he did not threaten the shores of Valinor, no blasphemy would be heeded by his Father, no crime taken to task. He understood the boundary now, the unspoken rule. There was space for him after all, in the great tapestry of the world, and he had finally found it. This was a brave new age, and it would be Sauron’s age.

Turning to the oncoming wave, Sauron spread his arms, and waited to be broken, so that he could begin the remaking.

**Author's Note:**

> A Sauron who would greatly benefit from being forced to write a book report on the Athrabeth and a therapist to vent to about his dad.   
> I mean, is he not supposed to have secret Feelings about how the elves are called the Firstborn but Eru licherally made the Ainur first? It's half only child hating new baby who beats him up repeatedly and half middle child doesn't think new baby has personhood because new baby isn't immortal and is more flesh than soul??? But the new baby keeps beating them anyways despite being almost entirely flesh. Like a gullible toddler who will eat a lemon when you tell them to, but who can bulldoze your house if you build it too close to their lawn. This metaphor has gotten away from me. I'm sorry.
> 
> I lost the last third of this due to the fallibility of cloud saves on a wonky internet connection, so I may or may not have ignored the 10k I owe my supervisor and a mountain of marking to rewrite what I lost with all the speed of a particularly slow snail, but honestly hashtag worthit.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I'm never certain I've pinned Sauron down. He's strangely elusive, despite being so prominent a character.


End file.
